Chapter Thirteen
Downtown St. Louis
One Month after the Great Reset
Four weeks after Tony Diamante first proposed shutting and locking the gates to the outside world, he was regarded as a savior and a genius. While the outer city of St. Louis died a fiery death, the people inside the City Center, now known simply as The ARK, lived a comfortable life. Emotions remained a bit on edge with the future still unknown, and everyone experienced quiet withdrawals from a life built on gadgets and gizmos. “But better in here than out there,” was the end of many conversations.
Peacekeepers, the ARK security officers under the command of Tony’s cousin Bobby Costello, experienced a different world from the relative safety of the ARK. Waves of desperate refugees tried to flow over the barricades built up in the streets between the high-rise buildings. ARK personnel died in some of the clashes, giving Tony the perfect opportunity to conduct state funerals and speak about their sacrifice for the greater good. The somber ceremonies drew the community closer together quite nicely.
Organizing the first funerals, Tony’s consigliere Uncle Jack noticed that no priest or rabbi had been invited to join the ARK, so he chose the mayor to preside over the services. She provided an effective and heartfelt speech about the sacrifices the fallen made for the safety of her family and others gathered in the ARK. Since the former city police force was now a part of the Peacekeepers, her words had authority with all people living in the ARK. The faces of the fallen were painted on a wall facing the City Center fountain with a brief biography.
Without Vid screens or any other form of electronic stimulus, people found other ways to pass the time. Live music was a constant source of entertainment, and so were short plays held down by the fountain. Police and fire department bagpipes turned out to be a surprising hit, the sad wailings a musical reflection of the dark world they now occupied.
Many took to the tower roofs with binoculars or telescopes. Through the looking glasses, the voyeurs watched battles for survival rage through the city. Huge fires consumed any undamaged neighborhood, engulfing any flammable material left. Citizen volunteers watched the streets, using flags or mirrors to alert Peacekeepers to dangers approaching the barricades.
No one ever asked who was in charge. The entire food supply rested securely in vaults at the bottom of Tony’s Renaissance Tower headquarters. Getting in and out of the building was a very difficult proposition, and was completely impossible if the Peacekeepers didn’t want you there. Upon entry, security personnel escorted visitors to their destination. No one roamed freely through the halls and visits were short and to the point. Other Firms kept some food supply of their own when they first moved in, that was no secret. Tony didn’t mind; they couldn’t store enough to last long if someone made a move on him. Besides, the Peacekeepers kept all the guns, and they worked for Tony.
Tony’s time was occupied with plans for the city after the destruction was over. He intended to use all of downtown as his capital with the City Center remaining the hub of activities. Knowing that human beings are the most resilient animal, he assumed thousands of survivors still roamed out there in the rubble. He needed enough to be alive and safe to farm once the Peacekeepers secured the surrounding blocks. I hope some of the gangs are still together; those are people I’ve worked with in the past. They were businessmen at heart, and would understand his vision.
Uncle Jack once again busied himself with human resource issues. Once they established contact with surviving groups and ensured that the rest of the city was no longer a threat, he’d get rid of a lot of the government bureaucrats who entered the ARK. They’d keep the mayor, as she was a real asset in building the structure of the new city. Community organizing held zero interest to Tony or Uncle Jack.
On the other hand, most of the city council needed to go. The old police chief, too. Uncle Jack figured he figured he could clear about a hundred deadweight residents with no problem. That would be a nice reminder to the others about pulling your own weight – a brutal business, but sometimes you could affect addition by subtraction.
Maps reflecting different sectors of the city covered his office walls. Colors identified blocks leveled by fire, still occupied, no movement detected, and first priority for pacifying. Small labels dotted the map holding the names of gangs that once ruled the neighborhoods. Peacekeeper patrols already searched for the leadership of surviving groups. Rooftop observers helped by providing invaluable information about areas holding visible survivors.
The burnt-out sections would be farm fields very soon. Tony knew he had to get his own food production started as quickly as possible. Many ARK invitees arrived in older vehicles unaffected by GRAPEVINE or the infuriating Solar Storms. Upon arrival, these vehicles were donated for Peacekeeper use. Tony already had small scout teams out of town to reestablish contact with farmers who once shipped him illegal food. The hand that holds the food holds the power. He didn’t want his city to be beholden to anyone.
Scavenging abandoned buildings around the city, ARK Peacekeepers secured over six months more food supplies for the group. As long as the population stayed steady, they could make it a year and a half without facing real hunger. Those supplies along with whatever they could get from surviving farmers outside the city should allow them to get their own crops established. ARK’s entire engineering staff worked on that important task right now. Anyone who could be spared from the essential repairs needed for the City Center towers or barricades was assigned to food production.
A spinoff of that was rainwater capture. Although they had pumps to bring water up to the storage tanks on the roof, Tony’s group had not anticipated the lack of water pressure coming from the mains. Now he had people working on devising a system that would pull water from the river. But in the meantime, fresh water for sanitation hung like a specter over ARK’s engineering staff.
Nicole Kelley kept watch over the engineers for Tony. She knew what his plans for the city were; he didn’t hide anything from her. She was just as candid with him, repeatedly making it clear she wasn’t happy about Tony’s callousness toward the ugly parts of survival. Nicole didn’t offer any better ideas for keeping their group alive. But to her Tony still seemed too calm with the idea of letting other human beings starve and kill each other off. Assigning survivors to work for ARK personnel in a kind of feudal farming system struck her as medieval and cruel. Or at the very least un–American.
Even so, Tony and Nicole spoke little about the few things they disagreed on. Both preferred to spend their evenings discussing new projects for ARK and watching the noctilucent light shows from the roof of Renaissance Tower. Kerrey, the person responsible for shielding ARK from GRAPEVINE’s shutdown, insisted that the generators only ran in the buildings in the evenings, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. every night. After 10 p.m. only essential hygiene, maintenance and defense functions were allowed. The lights out command allowed even better views of the Solar Storms for the two leaders.
By the eight-week mark, the violence and fires around the city came to an end. Surviving warlords consolidated their power over the remaining populace. Anyone not willing to serve was dead or gone. As ARK Peacekeepers made contact with each gang ruler, they offered a choice. Join ARK, or die. Most of the rulers, having made it through multiple circles of Hell already in their lives, told the ARK teams exactly what they could do with their choice. Once the ruler made that choice, a sniper’s bullet would end their reign.
If a gunfight didn’t ensue, the second-in-command received the same offer. Naturally, they often agreed to the terms. Some groups were too far gone and had to be wiped out. But enough joined to triple the population under ARK control within a short time. Survivors who lived in fear of the warlords often welcomed the sight of the well-uniformed ARK officers like rescuing heroes. The exhausted people received something to eat and fresh water. After regaining some strength, each then received
their job assignment, usually digging potato fields. By the time the poor souls realized what serfdom meant, their spirits were crushed. Just weeks before these were spoiled, lazy Americans. Now they found themselves being forced into daily manual labor. The spark of life was drained; these former people were now more like farm animals. ARK supervisors remarked that the peasant life was “worked, fed and put to bed.”
Truthfully, most seemed thankful to be alive and not under the constant threat of violent death and starvation. The work was slow, and all had to be done by hand. But with so many now working the fields, soon there was enough ground prepared for planting. Anyone with farming or gardening experience was made a supervisor, with the promise of extra rations for themselves or family. After executing some who exaggerated experience they didn’t actually possess, ARK crews were able to find enough supervisors either from farms or who had been avid gardeners before the lights went out. Negotiations with local farmers yielded enough seed and potatoes to get the first fields planted. Peacekeepers occasionally came back to the ARK with entire families no longer able to safely stay on their farms because of the increasing bandit raids.
Each of the experienced growers was assigned plots to look after, and hungry volunteers to do the work with. At Nicole’s urging and Uncle Jack’s agreement, Tony loosened the reins on some of the survivors who were “volunteering” to be the field labor. Sane people understood the stakes involved. The food would be for everyone regardless of rank, and even those from the City Center were expected to pitch in to help grow. Tony even considered Nicole’s ideas for giving people their own plot of land to work. Everyone celebrated together when the first green shoots emerged from the torched landscape.
Living quarters made from former semi–truck trailers were formed into a defensive circle, housing supervisors and workers with a fire pit in the center for evening meals. Small fortified barracks kept Peacekeepers close while on security rotations outside the City Center walls. The troopers stayed sharp; human animals still lived in the ruins of the city. Guards referred to them as “Rat-eaters,” though allegedly that wasn’t all the bandits ate.
Although not anywhere close to being efficient or perfect, within one month of the end of the modern world, Tony Diamante and the ARK were in the feudal farming business.